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The Obamas Just Published a Beautiful Tribute to Aretha Franklin


Aretha Franklin, the undisputed Queen of Soul, passed away on Thursday (August 16) after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Several public figures have paid tribute to Franklin on social media, and now Barack and Michelle Obama are adding their voices to the chorus. If you remember, the trio enjoyed a well-publicized friendship while Obama was still in the White House. It began with Franklin putting on a show-stopping, cry-your-eyes-out performance at his first presidential inauguration.

“American has no royalty. But we do have a chance to earn something more enduring,” the Obamas wrote in a statement obtained by TMZ. “Born in Memphis and raised in Detroit, Aretha Franklin grew up performing gospel songs in her father’s congregation. For more than six decades since, every time she sang, we were all graced with a glimpse of the divine. Through her compositions and unmatched musicianship, Aretha helped define the American experience. In her voice, we could feel out history, all of it and in every shade — our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. She helped us feel more connected to each other, more hopeful, more human. And sometimes she helped us just forget about everything else and dance. Aretha may have passed on to a better place, but the gift of her music remains to inspire us all. May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace. Michelle and I send our prayers and warmest sympathies to her family and all those moved by her song.”

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Obama also released an additional tweet with some of his favorite White House photos of Franklin. “Aretha helped define the American experience,” he added. “In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade — our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace.” Michelle added: “She will forever be our Queen of Soul.”

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18 Powerful Tributes to Aretha Franklin’s Music

Celebrities Are Writing Touching Tributes to Aretha Franklin on Social Media





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Sara Sampaio Says French Magazine Published Nude Photos Without Her Consent


PHOTO: Marc Stamas/Getty Images

Portuguese model and Victoria’s Secret Angel Sara Sampaio is ready to name names when it comes to sexual harassment in the workplace.

In an impassioned multiphoto Instagram post, Sampaio recounted a recent experience she had while working on an assignment with the French men’s magazine Lui. As the magazine’s autumn cover star, she agreed to appear under the strict condition of not being photographed nude. “My agency and I insisted on having a clear agreement in place to protect myself in order to control the choice I made around not being shot nude,” she wrote. However, even with this clause seemingly being agreed to, Sampaio says she was allegedly “aggressively” pressured by the Lui staffers on set to pose nude anyway—and when nudity managed to get by in few photos, Sampaio says the magazine used those images in the final spread against her will.

“Throughout the shoot day, I needed to constantly defend myself and reiterate my boundaries with no nude images, making sure I covered myself as best as I could,” she continued. “While reviewing the final images taken, I noticed that there were accidental exposures with parts of my body that I didn’t want exposed. I spoke up and was assured that those images would not be used. The magazine lied and proceeded to publish a cover image of me with nudity, which was in clear violation of our agreement.”

This wasn’t the first violation Sampaio says she’s experienced. “On many occasions where the shoot was to not have nudity, I would arrive on set and the photographer or stylist would pressure, cajole, or demand that I pose nude because I had done it in the past,” she continued in her Instagram post. But just because she consented to posing nude in the past didn’t equate to her wanted to do it in the present. “Many times, I was shown nude images of myself as examples to coerce me into posing nude, and whenever I stood my ground and refused, I was criticized and judged as being difficult.”

As a result of her mistreatment at Lui, Sampaio says that she, her agency, and her attorney are pursuing legal action against the magazine. “What they did to me is unacceptable,” she concludes. “I feel violated, mistreated, and disrespected as a professional and as a woman.”

Sampaio’s Instagram comes after the #MeToo social media movement, in which women (and occasionally men) are detailing how they’ve been sexually harassed and assaulted throughout their lives. It was birthed last week from news that Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein has allegedly mistreated and harassed women for decades.



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Amber Tamblyn Just Published a Powerful Piece About Harassment in Hollywood


One thing that should definitely be on your weekend reading list? Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants star Amber Tamblyn‘s powerful New York Times op-ed published online Saturday. In it, she calls out the men who deny women’s stories of harassment and the ubiquity of sexual harassment in the acting industry before encouraging women to rise up and come forward with their own accounts.

A bit of background: Tamblyn and actor James Woods got into a heated debate about relationships and consent on Twitter last week when Woods criticized the age difference in a relationship in Armie Hammer’s upcoming movie Call Me By Your Name. Hammer called him out by tweeting, “Didn’t you date a 19-year-old when you were 60?”

Tamblyn added on to Hammer’s reply with a biting allegation: “James Woods tried to pick me and my friend up at a restaurant once. He wanted to take us to Vegas. ‘I’m 16,’ I said. ‘Even better,’ he said.” Woods responded that Tamblyn was lying.

In Tamblyn’s new Times op-ed, she writes about how she’s fed up with not being believed—and wants other women, especially in Hollywood, to speak up with their own stories of harassment.

“I told this story publicly as a way to back up the claim that Mr. Woods was, indeed, a hypocrite. Mr. Woods called my account a lie,” Tamblyn wrote in her Times piece about the Twitter exchange. “What would I get out of accusing this person of such an action, almost 20 years after the fact? Notoriety, power or respect? I am more than confident with my quota of all three.”

In her piece, Tamblyn recounts another incident, years ago, when she was starring in Joan of Arcadia. After being harassed on set, she writes, she’d worked up her courage and gone to the producer of Joan of Arcadia to talk about what was going on. Tamblyn says he listened but then told her, “There are two sides to every story.”

“For women in America who come forward with stories of harassment, abuse and sexual assault, there are not two sides to every story, however noble that principle might seem,” Tamblyn writes. “Women do not get to have a side. They get to have an interrogation. Too often, they are questioned mercilessly about whether their side is legitimate. Especially if that side happens to accuse a man of stature, then that woman has to consider the scrutiny and repercussions she’ll be subjected to by sharing her side.”

Tamblyn continues by powerfully describing the minute-but-impactful risk negotiations involved in being a woman, especially when it comes to speaking up about matters like harassment.

“Every day, women across the country consider the risks. That is our day job and our night shift,” she writes. “We have a diploma in risk consideration. Consider that skirt. Consider that dark alley. Consider questioning your boss. Consider what your daughter will think of you. Consider what your mother will think of what your daughter will think of you. Consider how it will be twisted and used against you in a court of law. Consider whether you did, perhaps, really ask for it. Consider your weight. Consider dieting. Consider agelessness. Consider silence.”

Tamblyn, who also penned an open letter to Woods in Teen Vogue last week, spoke of sexism in the industry by comparing the sad state of Hollywood to a deep swimming pool: “I have been afraid of speaking out or asking things of men in positions of power for years. What I have experienced as an actress working in a business whose business is to objectify women is frightening. It is the deep end of a pool where I cannot swim. It is a famous man telling you that you are a liar for what you have remembered. For what you must have misremembered, unless you have proof.”

Her powerful opinion piece ends with a call to action for women to rise up and share their own stories: “The women I know, myself included, are done, though, playing the credentials game. We are learning that the more we open our mouths, the more we become a choir. And the more we are a choir, the more the tune is forced to change.”

Read her full op-ed here.

Related: Amber Tamblyn Writes Powerful Open Letter to Actor James Woods



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